Biz & IT —

Microsoft renames Atlas, splits framework into three components

Atlas has a new name. Can you guess what it is?

In a move that has killed off the last remaining "cool" name for a Microsoft product, the company split the Atlas framework into three separate components (which it basically was before) and, in typical Microsoft fashion, gave each one an incredibly boring name. The product monikers are as follows:

The Atlas client-side library has become the Microsoft AJAX Library (MAJAX)

The Atlas server-side library has become the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions

Besides the new names, Scott Guthrie also announced via his blog that the whole Microsoft AJAX shebang will be fully supported within Visual Studio 2005. That's good news because some speculation said that it would not see a 1.0 release until the next Visual Studio release shipped (Orcas). Also with concern to shipping, Guthrie noted that Microsoft plans to ship MAJAX 1.0 by the end of the year, but the company intends to issue a beta and a release candidate before that.

In order to meet its expected ship date, Microsoft is also pulling a few features which are available in the current CTP. Guthrie would not speak on exactly what pieces of functionality were being yanked, however, he did specifically say that the Update Panel would be part of the maiden release. Finally, he also said that the 1.0 release would be "100% cross-browser and cross-platform." Since one of the major complaints about Atlas has been its lack of browser support, the improvement of the framework's cross-browser support should entice many developers who previously doubted Atlas to give it a second look.